"T" Slang

tumble down the sink

General

A drink — booze. Cockney rhyming slang where 'tumble down the sink' rhymes with drink, and like most of these it gets chopped: 'fancy a tumble?' Vivid little image too — the pint going one way, you the other.

tumbleweed

General

A brevity code indicating limited or complete loss of situational awareness and a request for information to rebuild the picture.

tump

General

To knock over or spill something, usually by accident; often "tump over."

tumshie

General

A turnip; figuratively used as a mild insult for a fool or blockhead.

tun up

General

Describes something wonderful, hyped or a great deal of fun; that an event or vibe is 'turned up'.

tung tung tung sahur

Internet

Used as a rhythmic nonsense chant mimicking the 'tung tung tung' drumbeat.

tuning

Internet

Tuning is testing the waters through flirtation, chatting someone up to see if a casual connection could turn romantic.

tunnel vision

Gaming

When you fixate so hard on one kill or objective you stop reading the map, and walk straight into the four people flanking you. Classic way to throw a winning game.

tunneling / box fight

Gaming

When two players wall up into 1x1 boxes right next to each other and trade edits, peeks and shotgun blasts. Pure mechanical skill, no running. Whoever out-builds and out-edits the other wins.

turd herder

General

Affectionate (or not) jobsite name for a plumber. The joke is obvious: plumbers deal with what everyone else's drains carry away. Used freely by plumbers themselves — wear it as a badge — and by other trades busting their chops.

turf

General

To move a patient onto another team or department, often for non-medical reasons or simply because caring for them feels more trouble than it is worth. A respected survival skill among residents.

turfing

Street

Oakland-born street dance style — short for 'Taking Up Room on the Floor.' Mixes gliding footwork, bone-breaking contortions, miming, and storytelling. Cousin to hyphy, blew up in the mid-2000s with the Turf Feinz crew.

turkey

General

An undesirable patient — the admission you didn't want, the one nobody on the team will claim. Vaguer than 'crock' (which implies fake complaints) or 'gomer' (which implies elderly/confused) — a turkey is just unrewarding work.

turkey dump

Internet

The seasonal breakup that happens when a first-year college student returns home for Thanksgiving and ends things with a high school partner they've outgrown.

turkish bath

Street

Cockney rhyming slang for 'laugh', shortened to 'turkish'.

turlet

Street

How New Orleanians with a thick Yat accent say 'toilet.' Same vowel switch that turns 'oil' into 'erl' and 'boil' into 'berl' — the famous NOLA 'oi'-to-'er' flip that sounds shockingly like old-school Brooklyn. Heard most in white working-class wards like the Ninth and Chalmette.

turn and burn

General

Bus the table, polish it, drop fresh settings and get the next party in the chairs — fast. The whole night's covers depend on how many times each two-top can be flipped, so on a Saturday push it's turn-and-burn or die.

turndown

General

An air trick where the front of the bike is pulled up almost vertical, turned sideways, and the bars are crossed nearly 180 degrees before being brought back to land. It is a classic, expressive freestyle move.

turnt

General

Used as 'turnt up' to describe a party or moment that reached peak wildness.

turps

General

Alcohol; 'on the turps' means out drinking.

turtle doves

Street

Cockney rhyming slang meaning gloves, sometimes shortened to 'turtles'.

turtle roll

General

Rolling a longboard upside down and holding on underneath to let a breaking wave pass over, since big boards are hard to duck dive.

tut

General

Short for 'time under tension,' the total time a muscle spends working against resistance during a set, sometimes manipulated for hypertrophy.

tutty

General

Make-up. The whole face — foundation, mascara, the lot. Used by older Manc women without irony, by younger ones with a wink.

tuu

Street

A one-word dismissal of something as nonsense or meaningless, used the way English speakers might say 'rubbish!' or 'nonsense!'

tvl

Internet

Total Value Locked is a metric for the aggregate value of crypto assets deposited in a protocol or across DeFi, used as a gauge of adoption and trust.

twagging

General

Skipping school; playing truant. Yorkshire and Northern dialect.

twax joint

Street

A joint or blunt coated or laced with cannabis concentrate such as wax or shatter to boost its strength.

tweak

General

To grab the board and pull or twist it hard mid-air to exaggerate the shape and add style. Tweaking a grab pushes it to its most expressive form.

tweaked

General

Describes a trick contorted or extended to its fullest, most expressive extent for maximum style. A tweaked turndown or method is cranked as far as it will go.

tweaking

Internet

Saying or doing something so off-base that the only explanation is your brain isn't online. Used to call out wild takes, bad decisions, or outright lies. The TikTok comments-section version of 'are you serious right now'.

twee

Pop

Excessively precious, cute, or quaint, sometimes to an annoying degree.

tweeple

Internet

The users of Twitter, taken as a group. A cutesy portmanteau ('tweet' + 'people') that screams 'I joined Twitter in 2009'. Mostly used non-ironically by social-media gurus and ironically by everyone else.

twentynine stumps

General

The Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, California, named for its barren desert setting.

twidget

General

A Navy sailor in an electronics-technician rating.

twin

Internet

A best friend, a close mate, sometimes just anyone you're vibing with. Used like 'bro' or 'bestie' — the bond is the point, not the resemblance.

twin killing

General

A double play, in which two outs are recorded on a single continuous play.

twink

Gaming

A character kept at a low level on purpose but loaded with the best gear, enchants and consumables money can buy — usually to dominate low-bracket PvP.

twinspan

Street

The pair of parallel bridges that carry I-10 across the eastern end of Lake Pontchartrain between New Orleans East and Slidell — about five miles of open water. Got famous nationally when Katrina's surge ripped huge chunks of the original spans clean off; the replacement opened in 2011, higher and tougher. Locals use 'the Twinspan' as a shorthand for the whole crossing and as a weather bellwether ('they're closing the Twinspan').

twister to the slammer

General

A key, the 'twister' that turns in the 'slammer,' meaning the door.

twitch plays pokemon

Gaming

A crowdsourced social experiment where Twitch chat collectively inputs commands to play a single Pokemon game. Everyone types moves, the game reads them, and pure chaos follows. It became a phenomenon and birthed its own lore.

two and eight

General

A state — flustered, agitated, in a panic, falling apart. Two and eight rhymes with state, and you're almost always 'in a right two and eight' rather than just any old two and eight. Means your nerves are gone, not that you look scruffy.

two and twenty

General

Hedge fund and PE compensation standard. Two percent of assets under management every year regardless of performance, plus twenty percent of any profits above the high-water mark. Made a generation of managers rich; clients have been negotiating it down for a decade.

two plates

General

Shorthand for a barbell loaded with two big plates per side, i.e. 225 lb in the US or roughly 100 kg with 20kg plates.

two-in, two-out

General

The minimum staffing rule for interior structural firefighting: any two members who go inside an IDLH atmosphere must have at least two more outside, in full PPE on air, ready to drag them out if it goes wrong. Exception is a known life rescue.

two-minute drill

General

A fast-paced, clock-conscious offensive sequence executed in the final two minutes of a half to score before time expires.

two-point conversion

General

An attempt after a touchdown to score two points by running or passing the ball into the end zone from close range, instead of kicking an extra point.

two-top

General

Industry shorthand for a two-person table. The "top" refers to the tabletop and the number is the cover count. Used constantly by hosts, servers and managers to seat, fire and bus by table size rather than by table number.